Minggu, 17 Maret 2024

‘A farce, not an election’: Russians abroad join ‘Noon against Putin’ protest - The Guardian

The queue to vote at the Russian embassy stretched for more than half a mile along Kensington Gardens on Sunday as hundreds of Russians arrived at midday as part of a worldwide act of protest to show their opposition to Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.

It took a quarter of an hour to walk to the end of the queue past people bearing signs that read: “These ‘elections’ are fake”, “My president is Alexei Navalny” and “Vladimir Putin, go fuck yourself”.

Near the end of the queue, Maria Dorofeyeva, a young woman, stood with a sign that read: “Against Putin, against the war! For freedom, peace and fair elections!” The words Putin and war were dripping blood.

“I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many. I didn’t know there were so many Russians in London,” she said. “It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what’s happening in Russia. And we want to stop it.”

The long queues appeared in Russian cities and world capitals, where the Russian diaspora has swelled as hundreds of thousands have arrived in a wave of emigration triggered by the war and mobilisation at home. There were long waits in Yerevan in Armenia and Almaty in Kazakhstan, where tens of thousands of Russians have emigrated, on Istanbul’s pedestrian Istikali Street, in Phuket in Thailand and in cities across Europe including Riga and The Hague.

The protest action, labelled “Noon against Putin”, was proposed by the St Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik and endorsed by Navalny before his death. He called it a safe way for Russians inside and outside the country to congregate publicly and show their opposition to the president.

“There are many people around you who are anti-Putin and anti-war, and if we come at the same time, our anti-Putin voice will be much louder,” said his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue his protest work.

Navalnaya voted in Berlin on Sunday alongside other members of Navalny’s entourage and thousands of other Russians in a queue that snaked for more than a mile through central Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate and ended at the Holocaust Memorial. “Putin is a murderer!” they chanted at one point.

In London, hundreds more protesters stood directly across from the embassy behind banners declaring opposition to Putin and the war in Ukraine. This Will Pass by the band Russian punk band Pornofilmy and other protest songs played over a loudspeaker:

“All of it will pass, everything passes sometime
In a year, in a day, in an instant
Yesterday’s dictator will lie alone in the morgue
Now just a dead old man.”

Marina Ellis held a sign calling the elections “fake” against a backdrop of the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.

“I’m boycotting the elections. I’m not going to vote … It’s not elections, it’s a farce,” she said. “I want British people to see that not all Russians support the war. They are absolutely against Putin … If you support Putin and you have access to all the information, then you’re just an idiot.”

“I’m very happily surprised,” she said of the turnout. “I’m happy to see all these people.”

Ksenia, 24, said she had voted in elections six years ago but had not re-registered this time because “now I feel like it makes no sense to vote any more … But still I wanted to do something today,” she said, to express her opposition to the war and to Putin. So she held a sign that read: “I was born under Putin. I won’t die under him.”

Gennady, a pensioner, held his fist in the air as Russians streamed past him toward the end of the queue. “I am happy to see so many thinking, smart people,” he said. “These people have come here to be counted.

“I think it’s a clever action and it’s probably all that can be done today. You see the way that protest is put down in Russia. But it can’t last this way for ever.”

Asked for his opinion of Putin, he said he believed his time in power would “always end in a war”. “Peaceful people are dying,” he said. “Ukrainians are dying. Russians are dying. Children are dying. It’s a crime against humanity.

“There are many Russians who think differently,” he said. “But they’re being crushed. And the propaganda that is poisoning the minds of families, of grandfathers and grandmothers, is destroying all of our lives. We must fight back.”

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2024-03-17 18:47:00Z
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Iceland volcano lava nears Grindavik in new eruption - BBC

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A state of emergency has been declared in southern Iceland because of another volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula - the fourth since December.

It is thought to be the most powerful flare-up so far. Lava has reached the eastern defences around the evacuated town of Grindavik, local media said.

People have also been moved from the nearby Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland's most popular tourist attractions.

Iceland's airspace remains open. A giant lava spill is billowing smoke.

According to the country's civil defence service, the eruption began after 20:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Saturday, north of Grindavik.

This is a similar location to the eruption that began on 8 December.

Footage of the explosion showed clouds of smoke and glowing magma oozing and bubbling from vents in the earth.

The explosion has not affected the main international airport, which lies to the north-west of Grindavik.

Geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, who was among those to fly over the affected areas in a helicopter, told local media that Saturday's eruption was the most powerful so far.

Two lava streams have been moving west and south. Local media reported that lava from the latter had reached Grindavik's eastern defence walls.

Mr Gudmundsson said it was also possible lava could flow into the sea, but that this may not happen if the volcanic activity eases.

Einar Bessi Gestsson, a natural disaster expert at the Norwegian Meteorological Agency, has told Iceland's public broadcaster RUV that dangerous gases and small explosions could occur if lava makes contact with sea water.

Meanwhile, the lava moving west is heading in the direction of the Blue Lagoon and a geothermal power plant, which provides hot water for most of the Reykjanes Peninsula.

The Icelandic Met Office said this lava bed was "significantly wider" than in February, when an earlier eruption caused lava to flow in a similar direction.

Many protective embankments have been built around both, the head of the Reykjavik-based Nordic Volcanological Centre, Rikke Pedersen, told Reuters.

There are concerns that fibre optic cables on the road could be damaged - causing disruption to phone and internet services.

The Blue Lagoon is closed until further notice as a precaution. There were between 500-600 people in the area when Saturday's eruption happened, Ms Pedersen said.

Between five and 10 homes in Grindavik were also cleared.

The town's roughly 4,000 residents were only allowed to return to their homes about a month ago after an eruption in January saw magma spread into the town, destroying three homes.

Most of them have chosen not to return.

Iceland has 33 active volcano systems and sits over what is known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the boundary between two of the largest tectonic plates on the planet.

The last time the Reykjanes Peninsula had a period of volcanic activity was 800 years ago - and the eruptions went on for decades.

This is now the seventh eruption since 2021, and scientists believe the area is entering a new volcanic era that could last for decades or even centuries.

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2024-03-17 07:23:59Z
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Russians urged to disrupt final day of Vladimir Putin’s presidential election - The Guardian

Critics of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin regime have called for massive protests at Russian polling stations on Sunday, the final day of a presidential election that is guaranteed to cement his hardline rule.

The three-day vote has already been hit by Ukrainian bombardments and a series of incursions into Russian territory by anti-Putin sabotage groups. Early on Sunday, a drone attack caused a fire at a refinery at Slavyansk in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, where officials said one person died of a heart attack, while two people died after drone strikes in the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday, according to officials.

On Sunday morning the Russian defence ministry reported 35 Ukrainian drone incursions, including four in the Moscow region and two in the neighbouring Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions. More Ukrainian drones attacked in the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions bordering Ukraine, and in the southern Krasnodar region, the defence ministry said.

As Russians have gone to the polls, there have been acts of protest including pouring dye into ballot boxes and arson attacks at polling stations.

Before his death in an Arctic prison last month, the main Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who galvanised mass anti-Putin rallies, urged Russians to protest on Sunday.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, reiterated his call in the run-up to the election and said protesters should show up in large numbers at the same time to overwhelm polling stations.

She called for protesters to spoil ballots by writing “Navalny” on them, or vote for candidates other than Putin.

Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and there have been repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.

Russian opposition has called on people to head to the polls at noon in what they hope will be a legal a show of strength against Putin.

A Moscow resident in his twenties said he would take part in the protest at noon in the capital, “just to see young supportive faces around … feel some support around me, and see the light in this dark tunnel”.

The man, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said he hoped the demonstration would show the authorities “that there are people in this country against the conflict … against the regime”.

Putin, 71, former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over Russia until at least 2030. If he completes another Kremlin term, he would have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

He is running without any real opponents, having barred two candidates who opposed the conflict in Ukraine, as well as having Navalny jailed, leading to his death.

The Kremlin has cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to show they are behind the assault on Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-held areas.

The voting will wrap up in Kaliningrad, Russia’s westernmost time zone, and an exit poll is expected to be announced shortly after that.

A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula – an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.

Ukraine has repeatedly denounced the elections as illegitimate and a “farce”, and its foreign ministry has urged western allies not to recognise the result.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, and more than 50 member states have slammed Moscow for holding the vote in parts of Ukraine, with Guterres saying that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.

Russian state media have played up recent gains on the front and portrayed the conflict as a fight for survival against the west.

Moscow has sought to press its advantage on the frontline as divisions over western military support for Ukraine have led to ammunition shortages, although Ukraine says it has managed to stop the Russian advance for now.

A Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday killed 21 people including rescue workers responding to an initial hit – an attack that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described as “vile”.

On the Russian side, the army has reported repeated attempts by Ukrainian sabotage groups to cross into Russia and the local governor in Belgorod region on Saturday decreed that shopping malls and schools would be shut for two days in Belgorod city and surrounds.

With Agence France-Presse in Moscow

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2024-03-17 07:27:00Z
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India's navy intercepts a bulk carrier hijacked by Somali pirates - The Independent

The Indian navy on Saturday said it intercepted a bulk carrier that was hijacked by Somali pirates and demanded they surrender.

The navy said it intercepted the Maltese-flagged MV Ruen on Friday after it opened fire on an Indian warship in international waters.

"The pirates onboard the vessel have been called upon to surrender and release the vessel and any civilians they may be holding against their will,” the navy said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

The vessel was boarded by pirates on Dec. 14 and had 18 crew onboard when it was hijacked near the Yemeni island of Socotra, around 240 kilometers (150 miles) off Somalia.

Activity from Somali pirates has dropped in recent years, but there has been growing concern it could resume amid the political uncertainty and wider chaos in the region that has included attacks on global shipping by Yemeni Houthi rebels.

India recently began to flex its its naval power in international waters, including anti-piracy patrols and a widely publicized deployment close to the Red Sea to help protect ships from attacks during Israel’s war with Hamas.

The navy has helped at least four merchant vessels that were attacked in high seas by Houthi rebels. Indian forces include three guided missile destroyers and reconnaissance aircraft.

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2024-03-16 21:37:31Z
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Sabtu, 16 Maret 2024

Fatal Ukrainian Strikes Rock Russia as Vote Cements Putin’s Grip - The Moscow Times

In a separate post, Gladkov announced that schools and shopping centers in the city of Belgorod and some surrounding districts would close temporarily over the coming days, the second time this month.

Russia's Defense Ministry earlier said it had downed rockets, missiles and drones in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk which have suffered an uptick in fatal attacks in recent weeks.

Putin vows revenge

The Ministry later said Russian forces had fought off more attempted infiltrations by "Ukrainian militant sabotage and reconnaissance groups".

Kremlin proxy officials in the occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine meanwhile said one person was killed and four wounded in a drone attack.

The border attacks were a concern for voters hundreds of kilometers away in the town of Sergiev Posad outside Moscow, famous for its ornate Orthodox monastery with golden onion domes.

Casting her ballot from home with the help of election officials going door-to-door to collect votes from the elderly, 87-year-old Inessa Rozhkova said she hoped the polls would bring about an end to the conflict with Ukraine.

"Can you imagine how many people died? And now our border villages are suffering. We worry for them," she said.

In a nearby polling station set up in the vocational school, 68-year-old Elena Kirsanova came with her husband to vote for Putin.

"They try to scare us, but this is not a nation that can be intimidated," Kirsanova told AFP.

The 71-year-old has been in power in Russia since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until 2030.

If he completes another Kremlin term, he will stay in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

He faces no genuine competition in the vote, having barred two candidates who opposed the conflict in Ukraine, and around one month after his main opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison in unexplained circumstances.

The Kremlin has pitched the election as an opportunity for Russians to show they are behind Moscow's full-scale military campaign in Ukraine, where voting is also being held in occupied territory.

The first day of voting on Friday was however marred by acts of vandalism in polling stations, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.

Oil facility ablaze

At least two more Russians — one in the central city of Yekaterinburg and one in the western exclave of Kaliningrad — were accused by authorities of dousing ballots with green ink.

The substance being poured into the ballot boxes resembles zelyonka, a surgical antiseptic used previously by pro-Kremlin actors to douse on opposition politicians, including Navalny.

The ruling United Russia party that staunchly backs Putin meanwhile announced it was suffering a large-scale hacking attack on its website.

The FSB security service also announced a spate of arrests, as polls opened, of Russians it said were aiding Ukrainian forces or planning to carry out sabotage at military and transport facilities.

Ukrainian attacks on Russia have extended well beyond border regions too with Kyiv's forces targeting oil facilities deep inside Russian territory over recent weeks.

The governor of the Samara region that lies around 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the front lines said Saturday that Ukrainian drones had targeted two oil refineries, igniting a blaze at one of them.

A defense source in Kyiv told AFP the attack was planned by the SBU security services as part of "a strategy to disrupt the economic potential of Russia."

"Each such defeat reduces the flow of petrodollars that feeds Russia's war economy," the source said.

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2024-03-16 15:06:28Z
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Gaza aid reaches shore in first sea delivery - BBC

Orange dinghies approach the aid barge. There is a sheet over the aid that reads "World Central Kitchen"Reuters

The first ship towing a barge of humanitarian aid to Gaza has unloaded supplies on to the shore.

The Spanish ship Open Arms left Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine.

Videos posted online show a crane moving crates from the barge to lorries waiting on a purpose-built jetty.

It marks the start of a trial to see if sea deliveries are effective, after air and land deliveries proved difficult.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), which supplied the food, carried out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to deliver the barge's cargo of rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and canned proteins.

Gaza has no functioning port, so a jetty stemming from the shoreline was built by WCK's team. How the food will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.

WCK's founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that all the food aid from the barge had been loaded into 12 lorries.

"We did it!" he wrote, adding that this was a test to see if they could bring even more aid in the next shipment - up to "thousands of tons a week".

In a statement, Israel said the Open Arms vessel and its cargo were inspected in Cyprus, and that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops had been deployed to secure the shoreline.

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Teams worked through the night to get the aid on to dry land. This delivery has been highly anticipated since the ship set off from the port of Larnaca on Tuesday.

If this sea mission is deemed a success, other aid ships will likely follow as part of an international effort to get more aid into Gaza. The ships would use a newly opened sea route to travel directly to the region.

Separately, the US is planning to build its own floating dock off the coast to boost sea deliveries. The White House says it could see two million meals a day enter Gaza, but while a military ship is en route with equipment on board to build the dock, questions remain about the logistics of the plan.

Military operations and the breakdown of social order have severely hampered aid distribution, while Gaza's own food production has been severely affected, with farms, bakeries and factories destroyed or inaccessible.

The quickest, most effective way to get aid into the territory is by road, but aid agencies say Israeli restrictions mean a fraction of what is needed is getting in.

The World Food Programme had to temporarily pause its land deliveries after convoys came under gunfire and looting. And an air drop turned deadly last week when five people were reportedly killed when a parachute failed and they were hit by the aid package.

The UN has warned that famine is "almost inevitable" in Gaza without urgent action, and the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused Israel of creating a "manmade" disaster and using starvation as a weapon of war.

Israel has vehemently denied it is to blame for Gaza's food shortages as it is allowing aid through two crossings in the south. Instead, it has blamed aid agencies of logistical failures.

Negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza are ongoing. On Friday, Israel dismissed the Hamas's latest proposal.

Hamas said it gave mediators a "comprehensive vision" of a truce, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this "unrealistic".

The war began when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages. More than 31,400 people have been killed in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

A graphic showing the aid capacity of distribution methods such as by truck, plane and ship.

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2024-03-15 22:17:06Z
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Fani Willis ex-lover resigns from Trump election meddling case per judge's order - BBC

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.Pool

Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor in Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case, has resigned after a judge said his affair with District Attorney Fani Willis was inappropriate.

Mr Trump and his co-defendants had tried to get Ms Willis disqualified, saying her relationship with Mr Wade - whom she hired - compromised the trial.

The judge disagreed but said it did create an "appearance of impropriety".

He said either Ms Willis or Mr Wade should leave the case to resolve that.

Mr Wade's resignation letter admitted no wrongdoing, and said his decision was "in the interest of democracy, in dedication to the American public, and to move this case forward as quickly as possible".

In a letter accepting his resignation, Ms Willis praised him for his "professionalism and dignity", and for having endured threats since joining the case.

In his ruling earlier on Friday, Judge McAfee said Ms Willis had committed a "tremendous lapse in judgement" by engaging in an affair with Mr Wade, and also called her testimony at a hearing last month "unprofessional".

Mr Trump and the 18 others are being prosecuted in Georgia for conspiracy to overturn the state's 2020 election results, which they deny.

But they accused Ms Willis - who is leading the prosecution - of misconduct, for having a romantic relationship with Mr Wade, a lawyer she hired on the case.

They alleged there was a financial conflict of interest, saying the couple used the money paid to Mr Wade for working on the case to fund luxury trips together.

But Ms Willis and Mr Wade said there was no financial benefits and they split the cost of their holidays together.

Judge Scott McAfee ruled there was not enough evidence to show a conflict of interest, but there was an "appearance of impropriety", and there was a "need to make proportional efforts to cure it" before the case can continue.

The Georgia election interference case is one of four criminal cases Mr Trump faces, that both sides of the political aisle are watching closely ahead of November's presidential election.

But some of the cases have faced delays. His New York case over alleged hush money payments to a porn star has been pushed to at least April.

In Florida, where Mr Trump is facing charges for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, both sides also say the trial will need to be postponed, although a judge denied Mr Trump's motion to dismiss the case outright.

In his 23-page ruling on Friday, Mr McAfee presented Ms Willis with two options: step down, along with her team, and have the Prosecuting Attorney's Council take the case over, or have Mr Wade step down.

An outsider could easily think she was "not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences," Mr McAfee wrote.

"As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist."

Mr Trump's lead lawyer on the Georgia case said in a statement: "While respecting the court's decision, we believe that the court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade. We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place."

Mr Trump and his co-defendants could appeal the judge's ruling and further delay the proceedings.

The former president criticised Judge McAfee's decision in a fundraising email from his campaign, saying it was "not enough" to remove Mr Wade.

'A win-win'

According to Adrienne Jones, an assistant political science professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, delaying the case was exactly what Mr Trump and his co-defendants had hoped for.

"They will ride that out as long as possible," she said.

Ms Jones characterised the judge's decision as effectively a win-win for both Ms Willis and Mr Trump. The district attorney has the option to stay on the career-defining case, she said, and Mr Trump might not face trial before he is possibly elected president.

However, Ms Jones said the judge's "gratuitous comments" about Ms Willis' behaviour could harm the case by undercutting her credibility.

To the question of whether this could have an effect on a potential jury, Ms Jones said: "Absolutely. Everybody here is likely to be influenced by the news coverage of the judge's decision."

The case has not yet been scheduled for a trial.

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade looks on as he attends a hearing, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., February 27, 2024. Terrence Bradley testified as a judge considered an effort by an effort by lawyers for former President Donald Trump to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her romantic relationship with a top prosecutor who had been Bradley's law partner.
Reuters

Earlier this year, Ms Willis admitted she had a romantic relationship with Mr Wade, but said it had no bearing on the case. She denied allegations of impropriety from the witness stand during an evidentiary hearing before Judge McAfee.

Visibly upset, she held up papers presented to her by the defence and shouted: "It's a lie!"

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The hearing laid bare multiple intimate details about her private life, including that she kept large sums of cash in her home, some of which she said she used to pay for overseas trips she took with Mr Wade.

The hearings often revolved around disputes about exactly when the relationship began, with Ms Willis saying it started after she hired Mr Wade but a former friend saying the romance was already established by then.

The details of the romance came forth after one of Mr Trump's co-defendants, Michael Roman, filed a motion accusing Ms Willis of engaging in an "improper, clandestine personal relationship" with Mr Wade.

Separately, earlier this week, Judge McAfee threw out some of the criminal charges against Mr Trump and the other defendants.

He found six counts in the 41-count indictment lacked detail - although he said they could be refiled at a later date.

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2024-03-16 01:07:06Z
CBMiM2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jby51ay9uZXdzL3dvcmxkLXVzLWNhbmFkYS02ODU2ODM4MtIBN2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jby51ay9uZXdzL3dvcmxkLXVzLWNhbmFkYS02ODU2ODM4Mi5hbXA